Gunslinger Girl: The Lamb and the Tyger
by RJ Frazer
Summary: Name: Agapita / Former Name: Maria Machiavelli / Generation: II / Handler: Avise Mancini / Construction: Complete / Conditioning: Complete / Preliminary Training: Complete / Status: Active. *N.B. - This story is a followup to "See Naples and Die"*
1. Chapter 1

**GUNSLINGER GIRL**

"_The Lamb and The Tyger"_

_By_

_Robert Frazer_

_(With reference to a character created by "Danjo3")_

* * *

**Author's Note: **the origin of the cyborg "Agapita" is explained in the story "See Naples and Die"

* * *

"_Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over."_

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

* * *

"_What about this one? He's got an orange flag since we saw him last."_

"_Flag? It's a Post-It note stuck on the cover!"_

"_Don't be such a pedant. Something's new, so take a look."_

"_Alright then, let's see... he's been deployed with KFOR—"_

"_And there's been an incident?"_

"_Apparently so. He was probing out a landmine and hit the trigger plate."_

"_Jesus!"_

"_Yeah, what an incompetent foul-up. Why isn't it a red flag?"_

"_No, I don't mean that - I saw the same thing in Sarajevo. The Serbs'd bury some of them not flat but tipped at an angle, so that clearers' tools wouldn't tap the side of the mine but hit the trigger anyway. The trick worked."_

"_That's cold."_

"_He has to be a bit untidy after living through _that_. He belongs in the cyborg pile, not the handler one."_

"_That's just the thing, though – it didn't go off. It says here that the plate only partially engaged, and that he held the same position to prevent the circuit closing for over eight hours until he was rescued."_

"Eight _hours? I don't believe it. Are you serious?"_

"_It's what this report says, at any rate."_

"_Well, he's certainly got the cojones. That sounds like something worth a medal."_

"_Oh, that won't be happening."_

"_Why not?"_

"_Government policy. Our enlightened rulers disdain war as a method of settling disputes, and medals are a cynical tool of encouraging false affection through appeal to base patriotism and nationalism, doantcherno. Also, medals imply heroism."_

"—_And heroism implies danger, danger implies fighting, and fighting implies war—"_

"—_While Kosovo is supposed to be a signal success in the measured restraint of peacekeeping and the improving – not 'civilising', because _that _implies nasty old imperialism – influence of a modern, progressive, post-national united Europe. Here endeth the lesson, please stand for the profession of faith."_

"_Assholes."_

"_What a bunch of twats."_

"_Indeed. Anyway, move this one into the 'possibles'. Have someone run a full background check on him." _

* * *

"Today's the day."

Lorenzo lifted up his tumbler and swirled the drink around, watching the light skip, dance, spin and play over the languid swirls of the rich amber fluid. As he brought the glass down to his lips, his gaze lowered to the window in front of him. It was late afternoon, but the early summer in its wakening strength was still pouring out its fresh energy, and the world outside was crisp and defined with brightness.

Lorenzo turned back to Belisario, who was sitting on the corner of the desk, with his own drink resting in his cupped hands. It was an odd posture, but he seemed comfortable enough with it. "How many does that make now?" Lorenzo asked.

Belisario tipped his head to one side and thought for a moment, before lifting his drink up and taking a sip. "Oh, I know it must be at least twenty or so." He sipped again. "A full score and more."

Lorenzo shook his shoulders in a subdued guffaw. "You're a poet."

"And don't I know it."

Belisario half-turned towards the main body of the desk and began shifting scattered papers about idly, pushing them about as though his index finger was a broom. Lorenzo raised his eyebrows in surprise – he would have thought that the experienced senior doctor, intimate with the mind through his overseeing the cyborgs' conditioning, would have had a better appreciation of discretion.

"Mind how you go, Belisario, that's all top secret."

Unwinding himself back, Belisario gave Lorenzo a pitying stare. "Chief, the form for requisitioning _new office stationery _is "Top Secret"."

Lorenzo masked his grin behind a sip of his drink. "Well, think of the scandal if the media could just walk into the National Archives and see, right then and there, how many taxpayer dollars were being wasted on Draghi's tendency to switch for new pencils, instead of spending effort sharpening a blunt one."

Belisario chuckled. "Still, you can't blame me, I need some stimulation. Twenty-three, twenty-four, however many more. Sort of saps the momentousness out of it all."

"Repetition grinds it down to routine?"

"Routine..." Belisario's gaze wandered for a moment as he mused. Then, with sudden decision, he put his tumbler down on the desk beside him with a loud rap, so that he could gesture more freely, snapping his fingers up to enumerate each point. "Routine. You know, Chief, thirty or forty years from now, this is all going to be public knowledge. Anybody could photocopy a hundred after-action reports and make paper aeroplanes from them if they wanted. The handlers will get a new lease of life in their retirement – they'll have book deals, signing tours. Memoirs, trashy thrillers, talking heads in documentaries."

"And the cyborgs'll all be dead."

Belisario grunted non-committally. "While in the meantime my conditioning – _my_ grafts, _my_ drugs, _my_ therapies – will all be up for grabs. The government will sell off the patents as a revenue measure. Little tinkling droplets of golden solution, melting the truth of _omerta_'d-up Mafia men, dissolving battle-shock in soldiers... doping up kids so that the squalling brats keep quiet on long car journeys."

Belisario seized his glass with sudden forcefulness and took a full swig out of it before continuing. "It'll be in department stores. Sharpen your senses so you feel every rumble and beat on that dance floor! Acqua Di Parma will sell 'em in little round bottles – just like a bullet casing! Take a hit like the, uh... the _Gunslinger Girls_ did! Gosh, isn't that daring? Get a revolver's worth of shots inside one of those... those _daft yellow boxes_." The outpouring of vexation from Belisario abruptly halted, as though some solid suspension had stopped up the spout. The energy that had animated him, no longer being topped up, petered down to his feet. He sagged back onto his perch at the edge of the desk, pinning his slack body in place with another brief tug at his drink.

"And what'll be left for me when everyone else is sucking the juice out of the fruits of my labour? Now, I'm a genius with four doctorates, a revolutionary scientist and protecting lives and public safety as a key pillar of the Italian defence policy. Then, I'm going to be old. Maybe with an emeritus position at some decent-enough medical school." Belisario flicked his gaze heavenwards briefly. "Oh, and a child molester. Politicised students will be throwing bricks through my windows, or beating an old man up in the street, and feeling good about it."

Lorenzo studied Belisario carefully. The Doctor-four-times-over was usually quite level, self-assured and openly proud of his work. This... outpouring was uncharacteristic. Whether it was just an imbalance in the humours which was making Belisario feel a little melancholy today, or whether the alcohol had penetrated his shell and exposed some genuine low morale, would warrant further investigation. For the time being, the Chief concealed his scrutiny behind a more bluff, blokey response.

"Heh, that's one thing at least which is certainly _not_ my problem, Belisario. I'm fifty-eight, now – by the time this whole circus gets declassified, I'll be safely six feet under and thumbing my nose at you from Heaven."

Belisario smiled grimly. "You mean Purgatory."

Lorenzo frowned. "Well, I'm definitely not planning on Hell, otherwise I wouldn't be here."

"Hell, huh." Belisario swirled his drink, although the light from the window stopped short of his desk. He looked up at the Chief. "It took us absolutely _ages _to find a suitable subject this time around."

"I've just admitted that I'm getting on in years, but I'm not senile, Belisario. I know that much about..." Lorenzo's face abruptly reddened. "...what did he call her again?"

"Agapita," tactfully, the younger man did not press the point of Lorenzo's memory further, and smoothly continued with his original theme, "and she reminds me of something. Back when we were scouting girls for Mancini, we kept hitting walls. They were too old, or their families were too large or too well-connected and it was impractical to keep a lid on what was going on. Or their illnesses were misdiagnosed, or their injuries were exaggerated, or they had rallied miraculously and were actually on the road to recovery – which left us standing around looking like morons, with our bonesaws and retractors hanging out.

"All the time, people were getting better, and we wanted them to get _worse_! When Bossi handed his daughter over to us, you know what I thought?" Belisario tapped the edge of his tumbler against the side of his forehead in a mock salute. "_Thank God, He's sent us a miracle!_"

"Or an opportunity to ministrate." Lorenzo frowned, shifting his feet about. "We do _restore _and _rebuild _broken lives at the Agency."

"I'm not arguing _that_," Belisario began as he lifted himself up and walked across the room to stand beside Lorenzo at the window, "I wouldn't be here myself if I felt unsure enough to have to defend myself. But it's odd that we rely on misery and iniquity to do our little consolation bit."

They both stared out of the window.

"Funny old world."

The shadows stretching along the grass by the tree outside lengthened some inches, until the branches mingled with and infiltrated the cast of the building.

"..._Gunslinger Girls?_"

"I know! It sounded stupid when I said it – like some bloody comic strip!"

Lorenzo coughed. Belisario snorted. Lorenzeo guffawed. Belisario chuckled.

And then they were both laughing, slapping each other's shoulders, stamping on the carpet, hooting at the sky outside. Belisario heaved himself across to one of the couches, his body still shaking from tremors of giggles, while Lorenzo fussed about the bureau, refreshing their drinks.

* * *

"_When was the first time that you killed someone?"_

"_That's an odd question. Aren't you supposed to start with how I feel about my mother?"_

"_Oh, I already know that. She's a total bitch and you hate her guts."_

"_Wha--? I—"_

"_Y'see, we started elsewhere because I thought that I'd lower you in gently. _'Subject is confrontational in conversation, seeing discussion instead as argument and a challenge to be won. He is outwardly confident but ill-prepared for the loss of initiative and perceived control'. _'Snot a good start."_

"_I thought that this was an interview. It feels more like an interrogation."_

"_They're pretty much the same, although we have coffee and biscuits in the anteroom... hey, I'm not that much of a comedian!"_

"_--hah - Oh, sorry, but what you just said - I think that I've just got that initiative back."_

"_...fair enough. Anyway, my question?"_

"_Somalia, Ooh-no-Somme Two. My platoon was to clear out a village of Aidid fighters, and we hammered the place with cannon fire before my footsoldiers moved in. I was manning one of the turrets."_

"_Who did you kill?"_

"_Well, in the end there was no close-in fighting – they all fled as soon as we had opened up. We found six bodies that they had left behind, though, so with four vehicles you could say that I had quarter-shares in all of them – which tallies up to about one-and-a-half kills."_

"_Hmm. Very well – when did you first kill someone _directly_?"_

"_Not until Kay-Four – I shot two Kosovars during a riot."_

"_Interesting choice of words. Do you prefer shooting Kosovars to shooting Serbs?"_

"…_I'm not going to dignify that with a response."_

"_Very political of you. In any case, doesn't that incident make you a hypocrite?"_

"_I don't follow."_

"_Well, let's leave aside how a situation becoming so bad that you needed to use your weapon reflects on your competence—"_

"_What the_ fuck_? Now hang on—"_

"—_and consider your personal philosophy, which my notes say here that people who fight set themselves apart. I can't see how angry civilians might fall in that bracket."_

"_They weren't there for a picnic – they were pelting us with Molotovs."_

"_And you had a powerful rifle which can kill someone from five hundred metres away." _

"_Pity they were only twenty metres away though, eh? Damnit, they started it – they had fair warning, they knew what they were getting into!"_

"_Did they, though? Shouldn't you be more discriminating? Isn't that one of your duties as a soldier, as opposed to some brute enforcer? Isn't greater, deeper perception how you justify being an officer?"_

"…"

"_Major?"_

"…_No. No, it's not my duty. I will act to the utmost of my powers, but I shouldn't be responsible for others' wilfulness and stupidity."_

* * *

"Need a coffee."

Avise waved a hand towards the table.

"But, Avise," Priscilla protested, "You've had five cups. You'll be climbing the walls."

Avise sighed heavily, slouching in his chair as though he'd been popped and was deflating. He then threw Priscilla a pathetic, imploring look. "I'd better drink even more then, so my body can build up a tolerance and limit its effects."

"Okay then…" Priscilla tipped the urn and the dark fluid – noticeably blacker and thicker for having settled at the bottom of the pot – descended into Avise's cup. Nodding in appreciation for the service, Avise brought the cup to his lips and took a long pull at it, as though it was almost a bottle of hard liquor.

"_Good shit._" Avise rasped hoarsely, his throat as smooth as sandpaper as the slug of coffee had to be peeled off the sides of his gullet to make its way down to his stomach.

"Oh, you!" Priscilla flapped a despairing hand at Avise as she leaned back deeply into her own chair, smiling broadly.

That smile, however, was frozen, false, pasted-on – a muscle-movement that she mimicked out of a sense of obligation. Nervous tension strained the air – any attempt at a genuine smile became a twitching, spastic grin, before flailing out and dying altogether.

Avise was sitting in one of the round tables in waiting area of the Agency hospital. The late afternoon light became diffuse as it swam through the thick glass blocks of the space's outer wall, but the effect was less a dreamlike wall of light and more an irritating haze to flinch from. He was surrounded by other members of Section Two, there to provide moral support and see him off on his first step in to the great unknown – Avise appreciated the gesture, he really did, but in the circumstances the close cluster of comradeship felt more like walls boxing him in.

Biff had been sitting on the edge of one of the neighbouring tables, swinging his legs about idly – when the conversation flagged, he took it upon himself to revive it. He bounced into a standing position, and spent a few seconds shadow-boxing before cracking a smile towards Avise. "Hey, come on, don't slouch, I thought that you were meant to be a stern and upstanding war veteran?" Biff laughed. "This ought to be a relief. All this beating about the bush with ideas and thoughts, now you can get your hands on something proper and physical!"

Avise glanced up at the other man. Biff was an experienced handler – his comfort in the role was plain to see and Avise supposed that he knew what he was talking about, but if anything it only made it even harder for Avise to quiet his spirit. Biff was a veteran, while Avise – well, he hadn't even started.

Yet.

There was a massive gulf to cross before he could even feel remotely at ease as the Biff.

"Uh, sure. It'd be nice." Avise mumbled.

Biff had tried to condense down thefretful atmosphere of worry down into something solid and certain – but giving it form had only allowed it to be sliced apart on the quivering piano-wire of tension that was stretched taut across the room. He gave up with a sigh and retreated back to his seat.

Fingers drummed.

Feet shifted.

Throats coughed.

Ferro leaned back in her chair, pulling he arms over her lead in a long, languorous, studiedly relaxed stretch. Avise wouldn't have imagined that the businesslike Ferro would have turned up to this sort of gathering, but she'd even dressed casually, with a blouse with sleeves rolled up to the elbow and unbuttoned at the neck so as to give the barest coy hint of the curve of her breasts. That only unnerved Avise more – he couldn't tell whether Ferro really had a different and less stringent 'off-duty' character, or if her current dress and bearing was just a coldly calculated act presumed to set him at ease, and as sincere as a mask.

"Not long to go now." Ferro reassured Avise with an airy smile.

"Gee, y'think?" Avise croaked. The dwindling time clenched around his neck like a tightening vice.

Nails were picked.

Heads were itched.

Knuckles were gnawed.

All of them were listening to the tick of the clock. The second hand shook after each move, like a saw slipping down a little further with every cut. The air thrummed with the passing motion. The ticks became louder. The pitch sharper. The pace faster—

--the clack of shoes against the hard floor signalled an approaching figure. A man with a pageboy haircut and a white lab coat, his eyes hidden behind glasses whose lenses flared in the late light, came to a halt before the group.

"Is Avise Mancini here?"

Avise slowly, jerkily, raised his hand. "Uh, yeah, that, um, that'd be me."

The other man nodded, then pushed his spectacles back up his nose as his head came up. "I'm Doctor Giliani. Could you come with me, please?"

"Okay, um, well, I suppose that – _this is it_." Avise stumbled to his feet, his chair's legs scraping noisily against the ground as he did so, and leant down to put a satchel around his shoulders. "Ah, er, wish me luck?"

Avise slowly made his way through the group of Section Two staff, shaking hands and being patted on the shoulder. The murmurs of well-wishing and encouragement were low and subdued – you might well imagine that he was not so much being promoted into an elite as walking to a scaffold.

After filtering through the group Avise yoked himself to Giliani. There was no chance he could have gone alone. Avise had played cards with his adjutant underneath a table while mortar-bombs were knocking holes out of the roof above him, and laughed like a drain at the sight of a pack of scrawny, gangly Mahdists fleeing from an advancing armoured phalanx like rats before fire, but the prospect of a few corridors and a flight of stairs to see a teenage girl wake up was a gauntlet where angels feared to tread.

He'd almost made it out of the room when he tripped over a voice. "Mancini, aren't you forgetting something?"

Avise spun back toward the Section Two staff, his thin veneer of composure already cracking. Even after all his trauma and trepidation, he still wasn't ready? This was impossible – he'd never manage it—

Alessandro tipped his head sardonically and raised a brightly-coloured designer shopping bag. "You can't expect the poor thing to have to scamper about in the buff all evening, are you? Besides, Petrushka spent hours picking these out for her – _you're_ the one who said you had no idea what girls liked to wear today in the first place!"

Trust Alessandro to come out of the left field with an important and incisive observation, whose outward frivolity only made it more obvious and penetrating. Avise wasn't sure whether to laugh or scream.

* * *

(Continued)


	2. Chapter 2

"_I am dissatisfied."_

"_Ma'am, if I may, while the St. Mark's operation was only a limited success, we have bounced back and retained the initiative in its aftermath. Identifying the bodies of the dead terrorists has allowed us to establish links leading to many arrests and further kills in subsequent operations..."_

"_Breathe so much as a syllable about that blasted cyborg pitching warheads out of windows – _again _– and you're sacked on the spot."_

"_...yes Ma'am."_

"_This time, at least, I haven't come here to throw even more mud on top of Special Operations – and don't look so relieved. It's indelicate, and the Agency isn't out of the fire yet. Today I'm here for the Technology Department."_

"_Respectfully, ma'am, may I ask why?"_

"_I don't need to tell you that your name is pretty much muck in the Ministry of Defence at present. No matter what way you spin it, St. Mark's was an unmitigated disaster – and I'm a politician, I can spin quicker than a hurricane! Losing ten GIS troopers and two_ – two! – _cyborgs for a mere one-to-one parity with a mob of partisans, on top of all the collateral damage, just does not cut the mustard._

"_Each one of those girls running about on the grass outside costs over a hundred million euros! They don't have the luxury of 'off days'. They _can't _be 'as good as' or 'equivalent to' – they have to be harder, faster, stronger. _Better. _Otherwise, I can legitimately ask, what's the point?"_

"_We can only prepare for so many eventualities—"_

"_I know, nobody's perfect – but then, cyborgs aren't people, are they?"_

"_But research is still ongoing and even then the cyborgs remain well ahead of the curve—"_

"_That's not the issue. The Social Welfare Agency is now under closer scrutiny than it has ever been since the cyborg murder-suicide the winter before last. The Cabinet is riding me for constant updates on everything from kill-counts to _paperclip usage_, and in my reviews I've seen that the Technology Department is not up to snuff."_

"_Ma'am, I can't agree. As I said, we're still maintaining an extremely high operational tempo in the regrouping and consolidation following St. Mark's, and we've already fought several engagements. More are being planned as we speak. Throughout this intense phase of conflict the Technology Department's never been more active in repairing battle damage, and they've stepped up to the challenge with laudable ability—" _

"_And the fact you can't see beyond that is why I'm a government minister while you're still a civil servant with airs. Everyone in the department is listless. Anaemic. Going through the motions. Moving, aha, robotically. _

"_Morale there has gone down the pan since the cyborg death following the DCPP bombing. The scientists see themselves as intelligent, advanced, building a better world through their devices – but the cyborg died through conditioning complications, and it was the first occasion where their technology turned against them – it shattered their mirror of self-confidence. The very fact that they have to repair bullet wounds, having every imperfection be seen not in unfavourable reviews in the trade journals but genuine, physical pain, only cuts them deeper with its splinters. Now that I've opened your eyes to it, you must have seen that?"_

"_I suppose so, ma'am."_

"_It can't go on. They _need_ something _productive_, now. If there's nothing going, then _find_ it! _

"_Shape up – or we wrap up."_

* * *

"...conditioning and basic life training have all been completed – 'bundled in with the welcome package', so to speak – and you shouldn't have any problems communicating with her. It's the start of her life, but she's not an infant. Military knowledge and basic drills have been taught to her under hypnosis. Normally it's quite effective but there's always a minor risk of rote regurgitation rather than actually comprehending what she's received, so it's best to talk it over with her for a couple of hours anyway, just to make sure that she's thoroughly acquainted with everything..."

Giliani droned on as he and Avise walked through the corridors of the technology building. Avise's head bobbed up and down like a dippy bird every point of detail and procedure that Giliani related, but really he was only half-listening. He'd come to know the hospital pretty well over the last few weeks during his occasional visits to see Agapita being worked on, and this journey seemed to be taking a lot longer than it should – was Giliani taking him on a circumlocutory route in order to have more time to deliver his spiel? And why were the corridors empty? Had they cleared them for his sake? Even though no-one was watching, Avise squirmed under the hot glare of focused scrutiny.

"What do you want for the First Breakfast?"

Avise physically jumped at the direct question, stumbling to a stop. "I'm sorry?"

"Just a little joke of ours. We're bringing them back to life, so it's sort of opposite to how they have a Last Meal on death row."

"That... that's a bit ghoulish." Avise frowned.

"Well, she _will _be hungry once she's woken up properly, you know," Giliani shrugged, "so she's got to eat sometime. Leave your order with me and the caterers will have it ready for her."

Food? The leftfield pitch smacked Avise in the head and knocked him off of his already-tenuous balance completely. With his head lost in the dense clouds of old and new lives, the weight of something so low and mundane smashed him down to earth with a winding impact. What on Earth should she eat? What would she _want _to eat? She came from Naples, so pizza would a comfortable, easy start – but should he choose something different for precisely that reason, in order to shear off her old past associations and emphasise her new being? Should she just eat what he'd eat? Would that be strengthening bonds, or making her too dependent? Would asking for something too rich or complicated antagonise the cook? How could he make it right?

"Tell them to... to surprise us." Avise finished, lamely.

Giliani frowned and wrinkled his nose in distaste, the answer being disappointingly vague and inexact for a measured man of science. "Alright then... that should be simple enough to give." _But not to follow through on_, his sniffed to the air, before sweeping forward with a disdainful stride and forcing Avise to hop along to catch up.

They walked in silence for a few moments, and in the quiet Avise seemed to curl up into himself – his head dropping, his shoulders hunching. Giliani glanced at his companion from the corner of his eyes, and tutted irritably.

"Look, Mr. Mancini, I can tell that you've got nerves, but if you stay so highly strung you'll snap. This _isn't _that big a deal, really. You're..." Giliani paused for a moment before settling on what he must have thought to be a suitable analogy, "...just meeting an enlisted soldier newly entering the ranks. She's not some airy sprite beyond mortal ken. Trust me, a few days ago I was up to my elbows in her intestines and had bile all down my apron. She's very much of this earth."

"If you say so." Avise mumbled. Privately he wondered whether Giliani was genuinely trying to reassure him, or was envious of how the handler could elevate his thoughts to a height that the scientist could not reach, and wanted to drag him down to a lower level out of jealous spite.

"Anyway, here we are."

The two came to a stop before a pale pastel blue blue sliding door recessed slightly into the wall of the corridor. It was a plain, flat surface and completely devoid of detail or decoration, but its outwardly anonymous and unassuming nature was belied by the large, blocky console mounted into the wall beside it.

"Is this..."

"The recovery room." Giliani said matter-of-factly, still trying to defuse any sense of wonder to the occasion. "Just a moment..."

Giliani pulled a keycard out of his pocket and swiped it down through the slot set into the side of the console. Avise winced instinctively at the sound of clacking plastic and rubbing contacts – it felt like the wet hiss of a blade parting flesh.

A blue light moved over to red.

Tucking the keycard behind some fingers, Giliani moved on to the keypad. His index finger darted across the numbers, typing in a long stream of a multi-figure code with practised speed. Avise almost choked – his heart pummelled and pounded to the beat of each rapid beep.

A red light moved over to amber.

Still holding on to the keycard, Gilini now twisted his wrist so that he pressed his thumb onto a small square black pad beside the keycard. There was a moment's breathless pause, and then a shrill whistle sounded out of the grille on the other side of the console. Avise almost stumbled – the high-pitched noise felt as though it had stabbed into his chest.

An amber light moved over to green.

The door slid open.

Giliani stepped smartly to one side, and then with an encouraging smile motioned Avise towards the opened portal. "Well, in you go."

Avise suddenly realised that his lips were dry. Licking them nervously and swallowing noisily – the phlegm glucking in his throat like a rubber ball – he made a halting step forward. As he crossed the threshold, Giliani called out to Avise again, making him turn round before he could take in any detail of the room. "She's still asleep at the moment, and it should take about..." – he glanced at his watch – "twenty minutes or so for her to wake up. Try not to disturb her too much. They arrive here in an induced sleep and they can be disoriented and... _reflexive_ if they don't emerge from it naturally." Giliani tipped his head slightly as he thought back to Petrushka's activation. It had taken a couple of days for the pain to surface, but catching Alessandro under the chin with a smart snap-kick ended up giving the new handler whiplash, and all things told it was fortunate for everyone that Petrushka hadn't snapped his neck altogether. That would have got the second-generation programme off on the wrong foot, to say the least.

Avise's head twitched, the strain of proximity repelling him like poles on a magnet. "Couldn't you have brought me closer to the time? This is... a bit awkward."

Giliani didn't doubt it. Avise looked so nervous he seemed to be shedding years like hairs – the cyborg would wake up to find that her handler had shook himself up into a shrivelled old man. Still, that's what the handlers had signed up for – if they couldn't take the heat, they shouldn't start the fire. "Hey, it's five P.M. already – I'm clocking off for the day." Giliani smiled wryly. "Have fun."

The door slid shut – smoothly, quickly. Like a guillotine.

Avise blinked at the plain, flat colour of the door for a moment, then he turned around.

* * *

"_No."_

"_Sir, why?"_

"_Don't be obstinate! This is a paramilitary organisation, not an evening social club! We're not in the habit of offering privileges to whichever 'associate member' happens to know the secret handshake!"_

"_That's a disservice, sir. He's been an invaluable contributor to the Agency's mission—"_

"_He's a career criminal and a _child trafficker _who managed to wriggle off the hook. We discharged all due recompense and obligations to him when he took the stand in court – we don't owe him anything else."_

"_What about what we owe the cyborgs?"_

"_Excuse me?"_

"_Sir, we talk a lot about rebirth, second chances, and the like. That's fair enough, but we are nonetheless taking these girls and possessing them for our own ends. If what we do is truly selfless charity we'd rebuild the girls and leave them to go as they would."_

"_Any advancement in medicine requires heavy costs – what we do is part of the price _selflessly _paid for the benefit of future generations and millions of people far beyond our own small world. _Etcetera etcetera. _Do I really need to send you back to Policy 101? You did a test on that the first week you were here."_

"_The first week I was here, sir, I was locked in a cell waiting to be taken out and shot."_

"_Hmm."_

"_What I'm getting at is that his daughter – this... candidate, if you prefer – is unique. Some might see us as scavengers, leaping on and ripping apart the weak ones that fall back from the herd—"_

"_Do you see yourself that way?"_

"_...no. What I mean is, we can be relieved that this is, for once, an opportunity where _no-one _can twist it that way, where it is definitely _not _the case. He is offering up his only child to us. All that he'll leave to the world is being invested in us. For the first time, we can offer a return on that – advancement, achievement, fulfilment – and not just some meagre consolation after the fact."_

"_You really think this?"_

"_Yes sir."_

"_It's not something that you're reciting for his sake? It's nothing but you yourself, with your own conscience?"_

"_Yes sir." _

"_Very well. On your own head be it..."_

* * *

"Well... here I am."

Avise spoke not so much to announce his presence to anyone else, as to reassure himself that he was here at all.

Avise had heard that before they'd finished this wing of the hospital the awakening – although they preferred to call it "activation", now – was held in the monastery cells, in warmer, earthier, more homely and enlivening environs. Avise couldn't help but feel a wistful pang longing for the good old days to improve his own circumstances.

The recovery room that he was in now was not so much Spartan as actively inimical. The room was windowless, and while well-lit, the lighting came from audibly-buzzing fluorescent tubes. An air-conditioning unit set in the centre of the ceiling blasted out cold air, but just enough to tip over from cool into chilly. The walls were bare metal plates, and the door he had just come through seemed to merge into them. He could exit the room the way he came by means of an access panel him, but he could espy the thin but noticeable seam of another pair of double-doors on the wall to his left, although there was no apparent way to open them. It must be where they moved the cyborg in from surgery—

The cyborg.

_Agapita._

A bed, with a bare metal frame, lay before him. The endposts prevented Avise from seeing anything from the door, and her body came into view with all of the momentousness of land over the horizon as Avise walked around the side of the bed, his breath catching in his throat as he did so. Only Agapita's head was visible above the covers, but the thin hospital sheets didn't disguise the contours of her body. She looked... small. Thin. These narrow limbs were supposed to toss cars and punch through walls? This slight frame could be ripped through with a shotgun and still keep coming? During his training he had acted as support on previous Agency missions and seen other cyborgs in action, from a distance – but to be confronted with it, now, here? It seemed impossible – and the fact that he had accepted it, witnessed it, for months beforehand, made him feel like an absurd fool.

Ignoring Giliani's warning about not interfering with the cyborgs, Avise reached down and took the curve of Agapita's cheek in his palm.

_Soft_.

He pulled Agapita's slender – but lean, not merely thin – arm out from underneath the cover and ran his hands along the length of it.

_Warm._

He lay it back down, mumbling under his breath something that was half a desperate prayer for fortitude and half remonstrating with himself for being a gullible fool so completely suckered by a gross practical joke. The sense of distortion and dislocation – of unreality – threatened to overwhelm and drown him in a void detached from the world.

Seeing her lying there – it wasn't enough.

* * *

"_What do you think of our new arrival? Have you seen her?_"

"_..."_

"_I said—"_

"—_And I heard you. And I'm concentrating on observation of the east face of the target building. Our _mission_?"_

"_It's been our mission for the last four days."_

"_Alright then – if it'll expedite you shutting up and letting me concentrate then yes, I have seen her. Not that there's all that much to see in the first place – she hasn't even got any limbs yet. She might as well be a joint in the butcher's."_

"_That's a bit strong!"_

"_That's a bit forceful, which should force my dislike of this irrelevant conversation onto you."_

"_There's something else though, isn't there?"_

"Something else--?_ Is this some fist of 'fraternal outreach' or what other crap there is in your self-help books?"_

"_Can it with the hard-ass attitude just this once, I know I'm not wrong. You've been in a piss-ier mood ever since she—"_

"_Quiet!"_

"*Kzzzt* _Sniper post. Tango Aitch and Tango Eff have begun a roof patrol, over."_

"_Understood. Maintain watch. Out."_

"—_arrived here."_

"_You're still going on about that?"_

"_Guess so."_

"_You've grown up, little brother."_

"_Don't be patronising."_

"_Hmph. If you must know, then yes – I've no confidence in this new cyborg. She's deficient, and I don't want her in the Agency anymore than I'd want a helmet with a gopping great hole in it."_

"_How do you work that out? She's not even..."_

"_Bolted together?"_

"_..._healed _yet."_

"_I never figured Germans to be much for _sentiment_, but this is the second time now that he's inveigled some bleating _sob-story_ into the Agency."_

"_Is that a bad thing?"_

"_Don't be dense, of course it is! A cyborg is a device, a tool, an instrument, a _weapon_. This latest _indulgence _is not here through good strategic procurement but as a _favour_. That's a moral decision, not a rational one – people won't command her but respond to her. It muddies the waters – and I _know _that all the shit that conflicting orders landed _you _with in the Balkans, so don't backtalk me there. _

"_She's compromised, damaged goods – she has too many ties, and we're going to trip over them." _

"_Doesn't all that bile taste bad from time to time? The _first _'indulgence' hasn't turned out all that badly."_

"_More by good luck than good management. Mark my words, this new cyborg will be one thing – _trouble."

"_...Speaking of which, I'm seeing movement by the front entrance."_

"_You're right, and they seem to be in a hurry too—shit, we've been_ made! _All posts, weapons free—"_

* * *

"_..._and _there _we go!"

Giliani tapped his stopwatch as the grainy feed from the camera mounted in the air-conditioning unit's grille looked down on Avise beginning to turn the bedsheet down from Agapita.

Several other members of the Technology Department, arranged in a semi-circle around the television, all applauded enthusiastically at the handler neatly vaulting his first hurdle with good form.

Not everyone was so animated. While Bianchi chortled along in a sportsmanlike manner with the other technologists – it would hardly dignify the senior psychologist of the Agency to not be able to assume an outward persona – his eyes nonetheless betrayed a despondent attitude; he'd anticipated that Avise would have marched straight to the bed, not beat around the bush for a while. Marianna's dismay was more overt, as she ran her face down her hands in cosmic despair. "I was sure – _sure_ – this one was going to be a no-peeking!"

"Aw, bless." Fabio chortled. "Marianna, _everyone _peeks. Hell, Jean practically ripped the covers off of his cyborg the moment he walked in. Hilshire only got a no-peeking because Triela woke up straight away."

Marianna pouted. "_Well_! It was obviously my _mistake_ for trying to expect decency from a bunch of _pigs_." She tossed her head haughtily.

"And you'd know all about _that_, considering what you get up to with Tubby Terrero from _Security_? Oink oink." An anonymous voice was thrown in from across the room.

Marianna's face flushed volcano crimson at the sneering retort, but she was cooled from an eruption by the interjection of Bergonzi, who tried to spin the conversation off at a less piercingly acute angle. "Ah, Marianna, you understand that we are merely captivated by the female form, and the question of time is only how we can bear to be separated from a vision of perfection."

Even though it was a luridly obvious and overcooked line, the very fact of its exaggerated hammy nature made young Marianna's angry red cheeks nonetheless softened into a flattered, blushing rouge. "You are a charmer!" She giggled despite herself.

Bergonzi's endeavour of sweet-talking was not unnoticed by Duvalier, who people might have thought to be the more natural figure for smooth moves handled with the same dexterity and finesse he employed when lifting cheeks and rounding foreheads. As it was, though, Duvalier was sitting with his chair turned around and leaning forward onto the chair-back, idly creaking onto two legs from time to time, keeping his own counsel and watching the back-and-forth with an expression of bemusement – just because Bergonzi designed the cyborgs' vascular systems didn't mean that he had unlocked the secrets of the heart.

Behind Duvalier and sitting on a table pushed against the wall were his technicians, the willowy twins Melissa and Melitta. After tossing their long bangs of hair back from their faces, they both stood up in one smooth movement and leant forward into the discussion at the exact same angle.

"So, Avise Mancini has done what he had to..." Melissa commenced.

"... and we are here for what we want. The time?" Melitta concluded.

That brought a hush down across the entire room, as the assembled technologists all suddenly began exchanging narrow glances and tugging at their pockets. The crinkle of paper cracked apart the air.

Giliani checked his stopwatch. "Let's see, from door closing to peeking makes it... seventy-eight seconds." He used his free hand to extract and flip open a small notepad from another pocket. "Which makes you two the closest guess, yes."

"I do believe..." Melissa began.

"...that we've won." Melitta ended.

A round of groans and lamentations circled the room, along with a growing roll of 100-euro notes as the wheel of fortune span round to raise up Duvalier's assistants.

Despite the bounty they were receiving, the twins both frowned critically at the money resting across their outstretched palms, and then they turned their heads up and narrowed their eyes at each other.

"Nine hundred euros..." Melissa started.

"...is hard to split." Melitta finished.

"It's alright, girls, I brought my ante in two fifties just for this eventuality." Duvalier sighed philosophically, holding up the banknotes fanwise, like a V-for-Victory sign. "Four hundred and fifty each"

"_Thank yoooooooouuuu!_" Both girls cried in unison, their faces lighting up and their long hair shaking in joy as they gleefully snatched their prize.

Donato was not infected by the animation of Duvalier's assistants as they skipped gaily around the room, instead staring forlornly at the gap of his open, unzipped wallet. "We're going to have to cut down the bet if we're to keep this up," he grumbled, "a hundred Euros a pop is _killing_ me."

Duvalier laughed, and you'd swear that his spiked hair rustled like grass as he did so. "Ah, Donato, it's easy enough to make it all back, you just have to be a better judge of character to improve your... timing..." Duvalier trailed off as his eyes settled on the television, and with slow realisation he stood up from his chair and raised a finger towards it, for once caught off-balance. "Is he... is he... is he _feeling the cyborg up?_"

The words were immediately met with hoots of derision, but curious eyes which turned towards the camera feed despite themselves suddenly became wide with incredulity, and the laughter became gasps of astonishment and horror. Avise was indeed leaning over Agapita and placing his hands on her chest.

An uncomfortable, squirming silence descended on the room. Even Alessandro hadn't been this sudden and brazen. Guilty glances were exchanged – feet shifted nervously – awkward coughs caught and tripped on throats. Melissa and Melitta glanced down quietly and agitatedly at their winnings, as if they had clenched a handful of excrement but were trying to contain their exclamations of horror and disgust in case they attracted attention to themselves.

Should they intervene? Could they intervene? Guilty complicity in their sly book stewed with a desire to expose a twisted act, and the undermining, backsliding realisation that they did give their handlers free rein (and reign) over their charges...

Then Avise took the pot off the boil.

The rustling of clothes from sagging shoulders made the relaxing of tension audible and physical as the camera showed Avise beginning to quite deliberately turn his head to one side and gently lower it down onto Agapita's chest. It was unusual, even somewhat questionable, but it was indication enough that he was searching for a different kind of sensation.

"He's feeling her heartbeat." Marianna said, her words tumbling out in too much of a rush to disguise her relief at dropping the burden of responsibility. "That's actually really sweet." A smile crept across her features as she allowed herself to be warmed by a show of sensitivity.

The twins looked at their wad of banknotes again. Sharing the decided understanding that it was no longer dirty money, they split the take in a businesslike manner and folded it into their blouses.

* * *

(Continued)


	3. Chapter 3

"_You look like you've been dragged backwards through a bush."_

"_Gee, you're a bright sunbeam of gladness in the morning."_

"_Well, light shows up things as they truly are. Difficult morning.?"_

"Morning?_ Pah! It's still a 'late night'! This moody little _shrew _here hasn't given me a minute's peace."_

"_She's being awkward?"_

"Awkward_, he says! I'm warding her memory centres with a counterset duo-dodecahedric engram, usual textbook deal, but she's resisting it step by bloody step. Look at the monitor, it's impossible to reliably lock any structure. I've already had to reassemble eleven fractured vertices in the past hour."_

"_...good grief, this is a total shambles! A dodecahedron? It might as well be confetti! I expected better from you – this is no better than pummelling her into submission!"_

"_I know that it's not exactly a figure of elegance, but it's either that or I go in there and core out her frontal lobes with an R-bit drill. And believe me, when you've come up against as many walls as I have you'd entertain the notion yourself." _

"_It's to be expected. She did have a feisty, assertive personality after all." _

"_One I'm going to take great satisfaction mangling, mark my words."_

"_Open the intercom. Let me see if I can grease your wheels a bit."_

"_Okay, if you want..."_

"_Can you hear me?"_

"_I'm not interested! Go away! I hate you! I don't want this! It's painful! I can't see! I can't move! I want to run away! Stop it! Leave me be! I want my dad! My head hurts! My head hurts! My head hurts!"_

"_Oh, lass, I'm sorry, but you can't move because the blast took your legs..."_

"_I thought that not a few seconds ago you wanted to pulp this girl's brain, and now you're mouthing sympathy? You soft sod. Anyway, let me try this – ahem. _Lega Calcio, Serie A."

"_..."_

"_...Wow. That's a... striking effect."_

"_Back of the net, I think. Like they say_, 'Give me a lever and I can move the world._' You just need to know where to place the pivot."_

* * *

"I can't even imagine you any different."

After replacing the covers, Avise could focus on nothing else other than Agapita's quiet face, its skin smooth and creased by no age or worry. He gave the sleeping girl one final wistful glance, repressing the urge to grab and shake her awake, and retreated back to the small chair at the corner of the room.

He had a book in his satchel, the latest Dazieri crime thriller, to while away the time – fifteen years in the army had taught him the value of coming prepared, because any job required you to hurry up and wait – but he made little progress. The book had sagged into one of the obtuse and ponderous monologue sections where the hero Sandrone – a rather blatantly obvious and self-indulgent Mary Sue of a self-insertion fantasy – was quarrelling with his alternate personality Socio. He couldn't focus on the book anyway, as every few seconds he'd glance across the room

After what could have been thirty seconds or as many hours, Avise heard a rustle of cloth. He was at the foot of the bed before the book had hit the floor.

Agapita sat upright. Grey eyes – which could be as heavy as stoneclouds, as sharp as a wolf's pelt, or as bright and fresh as a piazza's paving stones after rain – held his gaze.

"Hello" Agapita said.

There was so much he wanted to say, but all that came out was the official checklist that he had rehearsed relentlessly before arrival.

"What is your name?"

"I am Agapita." She replied simply.

"What are you?"

"I am a cyborg created and controlled by the Social Welfare Agency."

"Where are you?"

"The hospital of the Social Welfare Agency's central compound."

"What is your mission?"

"To follow the orders of my handler and the senior officers of the Social Welfare Agency. To kill whoever they instruct me to. To protect my handler from harm with my life."

Avise licked his lips and took in a breath.

"Agapita—"

"Yes?"

"—Who am I?"

"I recognise you as Avise Mancini. You are my handler," her eyes fluttered, and her next breath escaped from her as a pant, "and I am at your disposal."

Avise had to turn away.

"Is something wrong?" Agapita asked, making to rise out of the bed.

"No, nothing at all." Avise turned back, wiping his face with his shirt-sleeve. "Anyway, what does the name 'Mario Bossi' mean to you?"

Agapita pursed her lips and her eyes wandered – she appeared to be genuinely searching through her mind for an answer. Eventually, she turned out with "Umm, it sounds like a boy's name, but I don't know anyone in particular called that, I'm sorry." Her eyes were wide and genuinely apologetic, as though she was fearful of having made a mistake and was imploring reassurance that everything was alright.

"What about 'Triela'?" Avise marched on smartly, not giving the girl time enough to brood.

At this, Agapita visibly brightened, a surge of knowledge flooding over her previous anxiety. "Oh! She's a first-generation cyborg. Her handler is Mr. Hilshire."

Avise rubbed his chin thoughtfully at the response. "Okay then." He then walked over to a corner of the room and trundled the over-bed table over to Agapita. He'd asked the Technology Department to set it up before his arrival – laid across it was his own issue assault rifle, an empty magazine and a couple of boxes of drill rounds.

"Do you know what this is?" Avise asked as he rolled the table into place above Agapita's legs.

"Yes, I do." Agapita nodded.

Avise waited.

Agapita continued to gaze at him steadily.

Avise blinked.

She did likewise.

Avise cleared his throat awkwardly. "Uh, well, tell me what it is." It seemed that she wanted things to be specific, but she didn't seem hesitant – not moving because she was worried about making a mistake – but that she just hadn't inferred any further implication from his command.

"This is a Beretta AR70/90, the standard-issue assault rifle for the Italian Army, and also sold for export." Agapita spoke in a clear, confident voice as a block of memory neatly slotted into place. "It weighs four kilograms and fires 5.56 millimetre NATO rounds, from a STANAG or drum magazine, and can also be adapted to fire rifle grenades. Its effective range is half a kilometre." She ran her hands along the length of the weapon as she spoke, slowly and smoothly, as though she was mapping its contours by the position of her fingertips, or elucidating some essential quality vested in the metal through its cool sensation. Avise watched her, rapt, even hypnotised with the continuous flow of her fingers. It was so quiet you could hear the slip of her skin against its body.

As she explored the assault rifle Agapita spread her arms wide out, from butt to muzzle, so wide in fact that her bedsheet slipped down from her front, exposing her breasts.

Agapita looked up at Avise and gnawed her lip, embarrassed. "It's, um... it's a bit big."

Avise smiled openly at the little bright flicker of personality sputtering and taking hold. "Okay then. Now strip it down – uh, take it apart – then reassemble it and make it ready."

A puzzled expression settled over Agapita as she picked up one of the ammo boxes. "But these are drill rounds, they can't fire. I can't kill anyone with these."

"That's alright, do it anyway – it's just an exercise."

The cyborg set to work immediately, her arms working rapidly and with precision, each shift of her limbs sounding with a smart snap or firm clack of a bolt coming loose or a slide ramming home. She made no effort to conceal herself as she worked – her earlier hint of bashfulness evidently having quickly evaporated as her handler had shown no concern about her nakedness. Agapita completed the task with efficient speed – Avise arched his eyebrows in surprise when he saw that Agapita did not use the quick-loader that he had placed on the table but instead loaded the drill rounds by hand, her fingers working with bewildering, almost blurring speed, just as quick if not faster than if she had used the quick-loader. It was the smallest suggestion of a cyborg's power, flickering through the smallest, most delicate part of her body, and already she had him stunned.

Avise was startled out of his funk by the sharp sound of the rifle's bolt springing forward. Agapita had shifted position so that she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and she held the rifle across her chest in a guard position, waiting for her next instruction.

"Right then: unload, make safe, and put everything back down on the table."

Agapita did so, working through drill-book procedures in the same exact manner, shifting from pose to pose as though she was the model for the diagrams. The drill round in the breech rang off into a corner of the room as she pulled the bolt back to extract it, and after placing down the rifle she swung out of the bed – again, entirely unperturbed by her naked body – and padded over to fetch it. When she came back, she neatly packed it into one of the open ammo boxes, and then sat down on the edge of the bed, watching Avise silently and awaiting her next instruction.

Come to think of it, Agapita was right – the weapon did actually look rather unbalanced and ungainly in her hands. She was sixteen, but slight – against her relatively small frame the barrel wobbled and swayed about like a vaulting pole more than a very-longarm. She could probably do with something more compact, like a bullpup.

Avise's heart almost stopped as realisation seized him. They could head to the armoury and pick one out. Together.

"That will be enough for now." Avise said. He retrieved the clothes bag and placed in on the bed within Agapita's reach. "There's some clothes in there. Put them on, and then meet me outside." He indicated the door. "Then, we can continue the day."

"Certainly, sir." Agapita nodded.

Avise turned and walked out of the room straight away – even though he'd seen Agapita stark naked and not been troubled by it, something still seemed vaguely voyeuristic about watching her dress.

As soon as the door shut behind him, Avise's legs gave out from underneath him as if the sliding door had sliced them off at the thigh.

The strength of a thirty-nine year old officer, a fighter, a killer, a multi-campaign veteran, clenched and seized out of him, draining away as heavy, wracking, shuddering, wet, painful, joyful sobs.

"Oh God."

Avise huddled against the wall by the door, the tears flowing freely, pouring in stinging rivulets down his cheeks.

"_Thank God._"

* * *

"_Are you positive that we're not going to be disturbed?"_

"_Yes, sir. I checked with his company – his compassionate leave's run out, he's got to go back to work. Although given the circumstances I don't think that he'll be in much a frame of mind to extol the Mediterranean splendour of the Pelagies."_

"_Especially when there's another boatload of immigrants washing up on the shore with every tide. What about the groundskeepers?"_

"_Paid off. They'll be chasing off headstone-defacing yobs for, oh, the next four hours at least."_

"_Heh, very good."_

"_I didn't think you'd ever be inclined to pay your respects."_

"_You're being awfully familiar."_

"_Sorry, sir."_

"_In any case, that's not why we're here. Respects would imply responsibility, and I'm not a murderer."_

"_Of course not sir, _omerta _was maintained, you have complete deniability."_

"_No, I mean it literally. She's not dead."_

"_Sorry, sir?"_

"_You lifted copies of the medical reports from the hospital. Did you read them yourself? She was in a stable condition, and then suddenly expires the next day?"_

"_Sir, if I may, she was very badly mangled by the bomb, it's hardly—"_

"_She _survived _the blast. Left crippled and stunted, but alive. She survived it for over a _fortnight. _If any complication was going to arise it would have already done so in that time. And then one day she suddenly pitches over and that's that? No prior indications of a decline? No medics' comments on any especial fragility? No attempt to revive her? The instrument of our revenge was _let go_, but not into the earth."_

"_You're not suggesting—"_

"_..."_

"Dear God_!"_

"_I'm hoping that He answers that entreaty. That's what we're here to check."_

"_How?"_

"_We dig."_

* * *

"Aren't you coming in with me?"

Avise shook his head. "Sorry, Agapita, but this is something that you have to do yourself."

It was late evening and darkness had descended over the Earth and the Agency. The fratello was standing on a path which led across some open grass towards the building which contained the second-generation dormitory. Agapita glanced towards it, and then turned back to her handler, gnawing her lip in mild anxiety.

"But it's only been a few hours." Agapita pleaded plaintively. "It's too soon."

Avise was heartwarmed by Agapita's sense of attachment, but nonetheless it had to be done – even if only because sending the cyborg off to bed was one of the points in the checklist that Ferro had given him earlier in the day.

"Come on, Agapita, think of it as training, like we were talking about earlier. We're fratello—"

The word caught in Avise's throat like a foreign body, still feeling unreal. The moment's pause allowed Agapita to respond.

"Yes! Yes!" She cried, seemingly energised by the mention of the word. "So we have to stay together!"

"—And it's why we have to spend time apart." Avise hastily rallied. Damnit, this stuff was easier when he could just order the company sergeant-major to oversee the barrack-house cleaning. A guilty voice creeping inside his ear insinuated that he could just as easily lay down orders before Agapita and the cyborg would follow them unfailingly, but he hastily thrust that back to the furthest recesses of his mind – it'd be an unworthy cop-out to dodge the challenge of connecting with someone he was pledged to.

"I don't understand." Agapita almost looked upset.

"Well, a fratello is a bond of trust, yes? Trust is an immaterial link, and that's what makes it strong, because it binds everything to anything. If you only have confidence in me when you can see me – well, that's not full trust, is it? It'd hardly be practical in battle – you've got to keep your eyes on your enemy, not your partner!"

Agapita looked unconvinced, but Avise's argument was at least enough for her to nod at for now. With a few more soft exchanges of encouragement, farewells, and reassurances that he'd still be here tomorrow, Agapita hefted her sports-bag of domestic essentials onto her shoulder, and slowly made her way over to the building.

Making her go to bed when she wanted to stay up late... Avise wondered to himself if this was something he'd missed out on when he'd sent Edvige away. Ah well. There was plenty of opportunity still to make up for lost time.

"Baby steps." Avise murmured to himself, without any hint of condescension, as he watched Agapita walk down the path towards the dormitory. He stood there for a couple of minutes even after Agapita had vanished into the building, both in reflection and scanning the upper windows of the building to see if Agapita appeared in them. When she did not he accepted it with a philosophical shrug, taking comfort in that she must be readily settling into her room and interacting with the other girls, which spoke well for her future development.

All in all, he couldn't imagine a single flaw that might have marred the day.

Avise began walking back to the central buildings of the compound. As he did so, his pace began stepping to a beat, and joy springing unbidden from his heart gave voice in a reedy, off-key, but hearty and fulfilling song:

_Oh Bersagliere leave happy between one kiss and the next, to the Regiment!_

_Feathers in the wind, shiny and black, are the pride of the Bersagliere!_

_Goodbye blondes, _ciao_ brunettes, you are the blossoms of the men,_

_Your kisses bring joy to the ardent heart of a Bersagliere!_

Then, at the last flourish, the sheer energy of the veritable sprint of a march threw Avise into a star-jump of an exclamation.

_HURRAH!_

"Went well then, I take it?"

Avise hastily pulled himself back in to stiff formal attention, although his attempt at recomposing himself was undermined by his head swinging about for the source of the interjection.

After a few bemused seconds the voice called out again, "Up here." Priscilla was leaning out of an upper window.

"Ah, um, yes, everything matched the expected parameters." Avise blustered, flustered.

"I'll bet." Priscilla pulled a wry, indulgent smile. "Want to come in? We've got some drinks set out for you surviving your first day."

"Damn your impudence, I'm not so green!" Avise protested. "I've been here for months already!"

Priscilla laughed lightly. "Oh, Mister Monsieur Master Marquess Major Mancini, that was just the _warm-up_."

* * *

"_Did _you _put that rosary in her clothes bag?"_

"_Heh, you're welcome, it was nothing. Thought you'd like it."_

"_Well, yes, and thank you, but – damnit, she thought the thing was a necklace, a... an _accessory_!"_

"_So you'd better teach her how to use it properly, then – just a little something to help you get started. It's important that a fratello has something to bond over, it stops the relationship being one-sided."_

"_Bond? And you'd know more about that than any other handler, I suppose."_

"_Jealous, much, hmmm?"_

"_Screw you!"_

"_That an invitation? You're even more of a devout Catholic than I thought."_

"_...heh. No, actually, they'd have had to put me in the Gen-1 herd for that."_

"_Wo-ooooaaahhh, steady on! Tee-Emm-Eye!"_

"_And with that, I think I win the round."_

* * *

"So, this is the place."

While Avise had been walking away, Agapita's own gaze was ranging up and around her.

Agapita looked around the entrance foyer to the second-generation dormitory. The fittings and furnishings were quite opulent, but for all of the brighter polish on the wooden banister and the recessed lighting suffusing everything with a comforting, cushioning golden glow of warm light, it still looked pretty much like a hallway in any apartment block. This puzzled Agapita, because she'd never lived in an apartment block before and couldn't have seen one herself, but she supposed that there were enough apartment blocks in the world to make their layout fairly common knowledge.

There was even a line of postboxes set into the wall near the front door. This was another incongruous detail, as she knew that cyborgs were not allowed to keep correspondence and wouldn't have any need for mail in the first place, but maybe it was there for verisimilitude to help them whenever they went undercover.

The letterboxes were all named, written on little paper chits slipped into plastic pockets on the flaps (it occurred to her that someone could make mischief swapping them around). Petrushka, Vanessa, Piera, Ilaria, Kara, Francesca—

_Agapita._

Her breath caught in her throat as she saw it, the wonderful sight of her name – her self, the – banishing her earlier questions about the boxes' purpose. People could contact her this way. People would expect to find her here. People knew that this was where she lived.

_Home. _

An impulse carried Agapita over to the postboxes, and she flipped up her postbox's flap, craning her neck to peer inside.

It was empty.

Agapita blinked quickly a few times, and then turned her head away. She looked pensive for a moment, and then with a flash of realisation scrabbled inside her pocket for the piece of paper that Avise had given her earlier. The paper was crumpled, and frowning at it she pressed it against the postboxes and tried to smooth the creases and crinkles out with her hand. After a few seconds of futile effort trying to flatten it back down to a pristine printer's plane, she regretfully conceded to reading it as it was.

_Room 302_

_Roommate Piera_

_Be Nice!_

302... that meant that it was on the second floor, two storeys up. She turned towards the stairs, but before she ascended she noticed a cork board set at their foot – another detail which looked strangely out of place in a building which looked as though it could be an upmarket hotel. Attached to it by drawing pins were several paper notices.

_All cyborgs MUST complete a counterform whenever signing out and returning weapons from the armoury. Omitting to do so is a breach of procedure and is NOT sparing the armourer from more paperwork._

_Please remind your handler that the Adult Staff Sports Trials will be held from the 8th August. You may be invincible, but he needs to maintain his fitness!_

_Whoever's been using my underwear, quit it, now! Your fat ass is stretching the elastic! –X._

_At least they've been getting some actual use. You just keep a stack of vanity knickers to pretend you have a smaller waist. –XXX._

_Attn. All. This noticeboard is for the exclusive use of formal communications, and sullying it with frivolous – and squalid – personal matter demeans yourselves, betrays your handlers' upbringing and tarnishes the Agency which it is your honour to represent. The above two cyborgs have been identified and disciplined. This notice is to remain here to serve as an instruction and warning. –Ferro._

Receiving it all with a shrug, Agapita turned and padded up the stairs, the deep burgundy carpet absorbing her steps soundlessly, and then emerged onto the upper landing. There had been no-one downstairs, and nor was there anyone around here – one long corridor, decorated similarly to the ground floor and interpsed with bedroom doors, was similarly devoid of activity even though there were supposed to be almost a dozen cyborgs quartered there.

The silence was really a little unnerving, like quivering elastic waiting to snap. Agapita felt that she could hear her heart pulsing in her ears. The scenario seemed wrong – too low-key, too mundane. Part of her she would have been more comfortable with the bare metal of the technology building, as the plain walls could disguise no tricks and messages in their patterns.

Two brass nametags were placed in a frame beside the door.

**PIERA**

**AGAPITA**

Another flutter passed through Agapita's breast as she saw her name again, further rooting her to this place, although her sense of fulfilment and attachment retreated a step when she noticed that the plates were slid into position, not stamped in place, to facilitate easy removal. The flutter became a shiver, and then fled away altogether.

Agapita reached her hands up to knock, and then stopped, suddenly feeling ridiculous. What on earth did she have to knock for? It was her room. Home. She'd been nervously fretting about the place since she arrived, as if every step would set off a minefield, and realisation swept over her like a flood of relief as she understood that it was no way to live, jumping not only at empty shadows, but even the absence of them. With sudden decision finally straightening out her lingering insecurity, she firmly grasped the doorknob and pushed the door to her room open.

"—ld you already _I'M BUSY_!"

Agapita emitted a choking gasp as a missile stabbed into the flesh of her collar.

She staggered, leaning on the door frame for support. Although it was more from shock than the pain her legs still quivered weakly and she pawed at the slender plastic object stuck into her, around which blood was already welling.

Across the room, turned away from a desk busy with papers pushed up against a wall, was a girl of Agapita's age with long brown hair, holding a throwing stance and looking baffled. She was frozen for a moment, like the screen of a slow computer clunking through a complicated process.

"You're..." Her eyes opened wide in shock and her jaw fell open in appalled dismay. With a jolt of horror she was standing, almost tripping over her own chair and legs as she rushed across to the doorway, gabbling in panic. "_oh my God I'm so so so sorry I had no idea I thought you were Vanny they didn't tell us when you were coming are you alright—"_

Agapita reacted by instinct to a demonstrated hostile charging into close-combat, and wound back her arm to plant a right hook firmly into the assailant's cheek.

The girl swayed backwards from the concussive impact, while her eyes span up into her head and rattled further still. For long, laden seconds she teetered, wavering on the edge of her balance, while Agapita pulled the object – a ballpoint pen – out. She made to throw it on the ground in contempt, but a sudden strong impulse instead had her wipe it down with her hand and then walk into the room and neatly place it on a nightstand by one of the two beds. As she did so, the girl rolled back upright, and blinked her eyes back into focus.

"Yeah..." The girl smiled embarrassedly, although a glassy look in her eyes betrayed that she was actively suppressing the compulsion – or desire – to fight back. "Yeah, okay, that's fine. I really did deserve that." She turned away a little too quickly to be entirely casual, and skipped across the bedroom to the other side of the far bed, before turning around and bouncing her hands on it eagerly.

"Anyway, you're Agapita?"

"Yes." Agapita nodded. "Are you my roommate, Piera?" The hesitant note in her voice was less shyness and more creeping alarm.

"The very same!" Piera cried delightedly. "It'll be great to have a roommate finally, I've felt like the odd man out ever since I was activated."

"Literally." Agapita mused, trying to make conversation. Being stabbed in the neck by an improvised shuriken was hardly the most auspicious start to proceedings, but she was mindful of her handler's order – _Be Nice!_

Piera looked confused. "Come again?"

"Well, cyborgs bunk in pairs of two, which makes them even, so if you've been alone, then you'd literally be an odd number." Agapita shrugged.

"Right." Piera looked consternated. "You're not going turn out to be some boring, officious type like that muckraker in with the younger ones, are you?" She curled her lip in distaste "That _bespectacled_" – she elongated the word with mock sophistication – "one which hasn't got anything to do but skulk about the compound all day and get under everyone's feet?" She added by way of emphasis.

"I've just woken up." Agapita ventured. "I think that I'm still working all of that stuff out."

That seemed to satisfy Piera, as after a moment's consideration she continued to pump the bed enthusiastically. "Okay then! This is your fortress right here."

"Furthest from the radiator." Agapita observed.

"Closest to the window!" Piera protested.

Agapita shrugged. "Well," she began breezily, "if it's my bastion against the terrors of the night, I suppose I ought to claim it and begin fortifying the ramparts." She slipped her sports bag from her shoulder and with one heft flung it across the room to land on the bed, causing Piera to jump up, startled.

"Alright!" The other cyborg masked her momentary alarm with a loud shout, as though she had intended to jump up with an energised exclamation. "While you do that, I'll go get the others! Sorry we didn't have a more organised party ready for you, but I'm sure that we can whip something up." As she began crossing the room back to the door, she came near to Agapita and paused. "Oh, how's your neck?"

It said something about cyborgs that Agapita had entirely forgotten about being stabbed after the immediate incident had passed. She felt the small puncture where the pen had struck. While it had bled, the Larraman cells had already clotted the wound over, and with a cyborg's tough hide the improvised weapon had really done little more than pierce the skin. After a wipe with a cloth it would be unlikely to even leave a mark.

"I'll be fine." Agapita nodded.

"Oh, thank God!" Piera cried, although she sounded more relieved than contrite. "I'm really, _really _sorry about that. I've got a heap of homework to do and Vanessa kept on blundering in and demanding to know if you'd turned up yet. Now it's my turn to give her some grief! Anyway, sit tight, I'll be back in a minute!"

The door clicked shut, and silence flooded back into the room as though Agapita had pulled plugs out of her ears. Although each feature had been built with care and quality, room was simply furnished – there were two wide single beds separated by nightstands against one wall, with a unit of desks, shelves and wardrobe pushed against the opposite wall, across from each bed. Where there was open carpet between the beds, though, the desks were linked together by a chest of drawers – the dull metal circles of the small, unobtrusive locks set into the wood identified it as the chest where the cyborgs could store their personal weapons.

There was a vase of winter-blossoming hellebore flowers on top of it, as well as a framed photograph of Piera with her handler. She had the man in a headlock. She was wearing a bright, sunny smile, enjoying the workout of some playful rough-and-tumble wrestling – the handler's face was beetroot-red.

Agapita turned back to her bed and unzipped the sports bag, removing each item, however mundane, with almost reverential care. A map of the Agency compound; An army drill-book; A booklet of base emergency procedures, along with a timetable for the refectory and laundry; a page-a-day diary; a small can of gun oil with a rag (but no weapon, yet); a set of training clothes and shoes with a towel and assorted toiletries; and then an unusual, non-issue item. She recognised it as a crucifix – quite a large one, fully ten inches tall and set on a base so that it could stand freely. The wood of the cross was dark brown and varnished so that her hands slid across it easily; the corpus that hung from it was made of pewter. Unease shivered through Agapita as she considered the thing – while her mind told her about all of the myriad theological and symbolic roles of the device, she found the image of a man wracked perpetually in torment disturbing, and wondered what sort of solace incessant suffering was supposed to provide. Agapita set the crucifix down on her nightstand, and looked at it again. Even if it was uncomfortable, it held her attention with a morbid fascination – however much it depicted something repellent, she could not deny that it somehow felt familiar.

At that, there was a loud bang as the door swung open and noise burst back into the bedroom.

The rest of the night streaked together into a blur. There were names, smiles, hands passing from person to person. Chatter about cars, clothes, cannons. Petrushka plucking at her dress and cooing appreciatively about how Agapita wore it. Embraces which aggregated together into one great rolling mass of endearment and encouragement. A bottle of wine. Poking and prodding and prattling about where she'd take her first bullet – peeling back sleeves to show off scars. Questions about her handler. Questions about herself. About the room. About the grounds. About anything and everything - except for the other girls themselves. Agapita wasn't quite _smothered_, but amidst the swirl of activity it was difficult to get a firm appreciation of the other girls. They doubtlessly meant well, but in such an environment Agapita felt that she was not being introduced – she was being _inspected_, and so despite the surge of excitement which animated the other girls, Agapita felt detached from the impromptu party, only seeing and feeling the others murkily, as though through gauze.

Eventually, things wound down. The other girls drifted away, citing tiredness, training, mission preparation – but always with a parting nod and smile – until only Piera and Agapita were left.

Agapita inclined a head guiltily towards Piera's desk. "I don't think I've let you finish your homework."

Piera grinned. "That's no biggie. If anything, your coming couldn't be better timed – I'll be able to plead exceptional circumstances and get an extension. As I said, it's great to finally have a roommate."

The two changed for bed. Piera walked to her wardrobe and donned a set of pyjamas, and she turned her head in surprise when Agapita simply undressed and slipped between the sheets naked.

"You really sleep like that?" Piera asked, tugging at the collar of her pyjamas uncomfortably.

Agapita glanced down at herself, and then across to Piera, taking in the other girls' bedclothes but feeling no sense of bashfulness herself. "Well, I was like this in the last bed I was in, so I suppose that it's what I'm supposed to do."

Piera frowned, thinking back to the day of her own activation, the hospital sheets scratching at her skin. Strength of recall was one of the privileges of being a cyborg. The infant years of an ordinary human were lost to a blur or forgotten altogether, but each cyborg received her day of activation with her eyes open and with perfect clarity, tasting the sweetness of air and appreciating the full wonder of each new sensation gifted to her by her birth. But that very same fact that it was a privilege made it exclusive – private, and deeply personal. She was uncomfortable with such experiences being spread even by other people, as it seemed to cheapen the very concept.

With a perturbed frown, Piera got into her own bed and turned over to go to sleep. She couldn't manage it for a while though, as Agapita still had her bedside lamp on – she was sitting up in bed and reading through all the paperwork that her handler had laboured her with.

"Are you going to sleep at all?" Piera was unable to keep the sour tone out of her voice.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to be awkward." Agapita reached over to switch her lamp off, but as she did so she caught sight of the crucifix that Avise had given her. A sudden unknown impulse made her switch her hand from the lamp to the icon – she shifted the base slightly, and suddenly the dull pewter gleamed brilliantly like silver. Agapita smiled to herself as the light from the corpus shone in her eyes. It wasn't such a bad thing after all. Nothing might be perfect, but there was nothing to say that they could never be improved, with a little effort – and a gift of inspiration.

Agapita switched the light off, and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

...The jangling bell of the room phone which announced Avise's 6AM wake-up call threw Agapita out of bed with a horrified squawk and made Piera brain herself against the wall in her tumbling rush to respond to the emergency action drill.

* * *

**THE END**


End file.
